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Sorry for the strange previous response. I typed it on my phone, so it's a bit weird. . I forgot to address some of your questions :

- For the input field I probably forgot to use the specified fontsize and color. I'll fix that.- About 4, I'll give you a way to enumerate what is available inside the objects. Until that you can watch in the database too : anything that's available as a string in the DB is available via getArgValue. There are some properties that are deduced like rpath and rdirectory but there are only a few.

I tried a small test adding a background to the pigeonlips skin to test the new transparent results and it looks nice so I'm sharing it for just that reason. The picture is from here http://photography.nation...diterranean-sea-swimming/ I picked it a bit randomly on the internet.

This skin is my first time ever using js so please point out anything that's wrong. Its but fugaly (code wise) but it does get closer to that "alfred app" experience.

Found out how to get the extended properties of a file.

Bashed my head against a wall trying to get data out of id3 tags, so for now album art only works if you have a cover.jpg in the folder of the mp3s listed. Lucky me i always have this. I need to include a library to get this done right but at the moment thats a little advanced for me. Any tips around this will save me a lot off googleing

Also the extended property index of a file differ for windows OS (win Xp, 2000, vista, 7) so they need to be changed. I'll write a skin for each version, but can only test on xp.

// what is the file and where is it. We'll need this most of the time in the if statements below. Get it early then. filedir = qatapult.getArgValue(0, "directory") filename = qatapult.getArgValue(0, "filename")

// Time to work out the extention. WIth this we can target the best properties of an object to display fileext = filename.substring(filename.length,filename.length-4); // lower case the extension then it doesnt matter is its .xxx or .XXX or .XxX - we still know it fileext = fileext.toLowerCase()

// this drew status line - opting out of this as i dont know where to put it at the moment /* var focus=qatapult.getFocus(); ui.drawEmphased(qatapult.getArgValue(focus,"status"),qatapult.getQuery(focus),15,SkinHeight-20,SkinWidth-30,10); */

I've also added a few things to allow path trimming (... inside the middle of the path instead of the end ) and a textrendering hint that allow you to use full antialias or grid fit that looks darker on screens.

For text color you can use textcolor on the UI object. You can also use the fontfamily property to select a different font.

thanks i'll give this a try.

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3. Uuuh ? I'm not sure about what you mean, I'll give a look at the skin tomorrow

Again i didnt explain this well. I didnt understand what was happening at first, but I think its on the matching of the status. In stead of colors i'll explain via text case. for example i type:

> appcatn

and in the bottom left by the 3 in the piture i get :

> APPliCATioN

only the Upper case text (its not really upper case - just making it that way to help explain) shows in an off white which is nearly invisible - its this text i would like to control the color off. The lower case text displays in the normal color i set so that bits fine. The only real problem is if its free text (using ' for example) then it all appears in uppercase. I understand it better now after more playing around so in a nutshell

- it would be nice to set the color of the matching text from the inputbox

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4. Don't worry about the performance of getstring it's in memory, you'll run out of place on the skin before it get slow

Again i didnt explain this too well ether. I was worryed about preformance of the skin/qatapult if i coded to get properties of the object from other sources. ID3 tag of the file, EXIF info for images etc. I guess i just wanted a little hand holding, but the only way to find out is to give it a try.

I have and the new skin looks up extended properties of a FILE type. ID3 tags and EXIF are a little out of my reach for now.

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I love the start of that skin

thanks - its still very early - It needs lots more polish. Little things like the alignment of contorls, text sizes etc. i'll make it nicer soon. Work in progress.

That's a very impressive work for a newcomer to javascript. - I've also added a few things to allow path trimming

lol - while writing and testing , writing and testing you wouldn't believe the pain i was causing qatapult and the crazy erratic behavior i got - thanks for the kind comment, but i'm still worried its buggy.

also dont add to much - the learning curve is hard! LOL - just kidding.

This skin is my first time ever using js so please point out anything that's wrong.

You may find strong opinions about JavaScript

As I understand it, JavaScript didn't get much time for design and polish before it got shipped and this shows. There are many oddities / warts in the language and sadly often trying to do things in a way that seems to make sense can backfire -- particularly if one has expectations about the language coming from a C / C++ (or similar) background.

If you intend to continue with the language, I highly recommend checking out some of Douglas Crockford's material early on, perhaps starting with:

Even if one doesn't agree with some or much of what he says, I've found his material well worth the time.

He suggests an approach to the language based on being quite selective in what to use in the language and staying away from certain bits (e.g. he suggests not using == or != and instead using === and !==). I have found this helps tremendously for JavaScript (and even AHK) but it isn't necessarily the easiest thing to figure out or get used to.

To help in this process, there is a tool Crockford developed and maintains called jslint (and now at least one fork called jshint). I used jslint while doing JavaScript (via FScript) plugin development for FARR and found it to be really helpful. Haven't set it up for Qatapult yet, but based on working with the OpenWith plugin, getting the feeling it may be a good idea.

After writing the above, I remembered that there is now this thing called CoffeeScript. It compiles to JavaScript and although it has its problems, seems a far nicer language to be writing in. It's pretty easy to get it set up once one has Node.js installed. May be I'll see how practical it would be to use for Qatapult-related things.

Thinking about something else : Do you think it would be worthwhile that I ask mouser a child board ? This is a little bit of a mess here, would you like to be able to have your own thread of plugins and extensions ?

any way i can fix this in the skin? Tried adding "qatapult.resultsvisible" to the if that shows the results but no success. Also tryed playing around with the "qatapult.getArgValue(focus,"status")" and text and type = EMPTY and adding that to the if, but no sucess. Now ewemoa's pointed it out its really bothering me

I don't think you can pigeonlips. I keep an internal state about the visibility of the results and I'm using it for handling the esc key. There is no way you could fix that on the side, and I'd rather you don't try because that would necessarily be tricky if you found something and that could be an ascendency compatibility issue.

Here's another update to the skin in case anyone wants to play around with it over the weekend and see the progress.

took another pass over the code and cleaned it up - added a few things. Got the focus in the bottom to indicate where you are to work nicely. Also made it so that's it all nicely aligned and i am mostly happy with the position of the components as its all worked out with fantastic Maths! The configuration can be tweaked at the top of the js.

Its almost ready for the "final cut" but i want to hold off on this until i can set the background to the results box.

Here is a new version. What's changed :- I added support for creating commands in script. Add *.command.js files under the plugin folder, all the methods defined there are loaded into Qatapult and you can call them from the rules using the tag <script>. Define your rule like this :

- The matching method is much improved : it now takes into account if the match is near the start of the word or if the query match characters consecutively and gives appropriate bonuses- You can now use page up and page down to navigate the results- You can configure the color of results with ui.resultBgColor, ui.resultFocusColor, and ui.resultScrollbarColor (because there is a scrollbar now )- You can also configure other like fontfamily, stringTrimming to change the font for various text in the skin. I'll extract a full doc.- You can also take complete ownership of the rendering of the results and draw them exactly as you want them with a API similar to the one of the args. However the drawResult might be preferable unless you have some very specific idea. Here is an example that can be plugged into the alfred-like skin :

I've found a small issue with the latest build and probably a few others. If you invoked a command on a result from the result list that is not the first, the bonus was assigned to the first item instead of the selected one.

- I added support for creating commands in script. Add *.command.js files under the plugin folder, all the methods defined there are loaded into Qatapult and you can call them from the rules using the tag <script>. Define your rule like this :